Loura Hall
May 04, 2026 ArticleTo support long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars, NASA and industry are developing technologies that can extract resources such as hydrogen and helium-3 from lunar soil, known as regolith. This capability, known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), allows explorers to use what is already available on other planetary bodies, from water ice to minerals. These resources could eventually support propulsion, energy production, life support systems, and other needs for astronauts living and working in deep space.
To advance ISRU technologies, NASA has awarded a firm‑fixed‑price contract of $6.9 million over the next year and a half to Interlune of Seattle, a company focused on developing natural resources beyond Earth.
Funded through a Phase III NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award, a contracting mechanism focused on transitioning technology into NASA missions or the private sector, the company will pursue validation of critical resource‑prospecting tools to make future lunar missions more self‑sufficient, reducing the need to transport supplies from Earth.
This effort builds on prior work with NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, in which Interlune built and tested payload prototypes on parabolic flights that replicated lunar gravity.
Under the SBIR Phase III contract, Interlune will design, build, and test engineering development units and flight hardware. The payload is designed to collect lunar regolith samples, sort particles by size, extract solar wind volatile gases, and measure their quantities. The company’s design includes a mass spectrometer inspired by NASA’s Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSOLO) technology to measure the concentration of gases released from lunar soil.
Developed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, MSOLO is a compact, rugged mass spectrometer designed to analyze gases and the chemical makeup of landing sites on the Moon. The MSOLO technology, developed by NASA’s Game Changing Development program,